South Carolina’s state government is leaning heavily into AI and cybersecurity — work that Chief Information Officer Nathan Hogue said is already reshaping how agencies serve residents.

One of the most visible AI deployments will soon be available to the public. In partnership with Tyler Technologies, the state is preparing to launch “Bradley,” an AI-powered virtual assistant. The chatbot will allow citizens to type questions in plain language and get help with tasks like applying to be a notary, paying taxes or finding water bill information.

Bradley, which is scheduled to go live next week, is a way for citizens to “have human-like interaction with a virtual assistant,” Hogue said, bridging the gap between complex services and simple, conversational access.

Unlike some private-sector platforms, Bradley is bundled with other state services, including identity management and fraud detection for safer digital transactions. Residents who prefer not to use AI can still access traditional web search and navigation, but Hogue said the new system will be monitored closely with “human in the loop” feedback mechanisms to improve its accuracy and usefulness over time.

But Bradley is just one piece of a much larger AI effort. In 2024, South Carolina rolled out an AI framework built around what Hogue called the “three Ps: protect, promote, pursue.” The goal, he said, is “to protect state agencies and citizens and citizen data, but we also want to promote and pursue opportunities for the use of AI where we can drive efficiency and drive better outcomes.”

This framework led to the establishment of a state AI Center of Excellence, which held its first meeting in February. The center convenes agency staff, higher education experts and private companies to evaluate proposals before they’re rolled out.

“We do a formal intake of these AI use cases in a formal evaluation, including not only the operational parts and pieces, but also the privacy and security impact,” Hogue said. “That’s obviously what we want to make sure occurs before we turn any AI out.”

That careful vetting hasn’t stopped South Carolina from experimenting with AI in some unexpected places. In fact, one of the state’s most unique AI pilots doesn’t involve paperwork at all — but, rather, striped bass. The Department of Natural Resources runs a small fishery that restocks the state’s rivers, since the fish can no longer reproduce naturally due to dams and environmental changes. The process is delicate: eggs must be fertilized within about 30 minutes of harvest and, until recently, technicians judged readiness under a microscope.

“We’re now using computer vision to implement a system that allows computer-augmented assessment of the cycle and when those eggs are primed,” Hogue said. While he admitted it may sound like “a funny, sort of different use case,” he emphasized its importance for anglers, tourism and people across the state.

Cybersecurity remains the backbone of South Carolina’s IT strategy; the CIO described it as “top of mind.” His team works closely with the state’s chief information security officer to provide centralized monitoring across more than 80 agencies. That means “logging and monitoring across the enterprise so that we can converge on issues as they occur,” he said.

The state has upgraded next-generation firewall services and strengthened oversight of Office 365 email environments, a common attack vector for phishing. To enhance its response capabilities, South Carolina teamed with Deloitte several years ago to run its security operations center, which Hogue says has been “a very successful partnership.”

But if AI and cybersecurity are the most visible parts of South Carolina’s IT push, Hogue said application modernization is the foundation that makes it all possible. Agencies across the state still rely on legacy applications, many of which were built decades ago. Hogue said modernizing them is a current objective and agency-level conversations are underway on what that could look like.

Modernization, the CIO said, isn’t just about replacing old software — it’s about unlocking the data trapped inside those systems. By rationalizing applications, consolidating functions and moving workloads into more current platforms, he said agencies will gain the flexibility to fully take advantage of the cloud and AI tools.

Hogue connected this directly to South Carolina’s broader technology strategy — because shared services, centralized cybersecurity and AI pilots all require modern, interoperable systems underneath.

“Continuing to grow shared services to drive efficiency, consistency and flexibility for state agencies, and getting away from the islands of IT is incredibly important for the state,” he said.

In the months to come, Hogue said he is optimistic about where this convergence of modernization, AI and cybersecurity will take South Carolina.

“It used to be that you click a button or you type something in,” he said. “Now it’s becoming chat and becoming sort of the computer does more for you with less input, which is an interesting concept. It’s going to be interesting to see how the graphical user interface changes over time, and how citizens adopt that and how citizens leverage that as a workforce to be better at our jobs. That excites me again.”